Cyberbile & Grounded

by Alana Valentine

  CELINE: Who says you can’t?

  ORIANA: I dunno.

  CELINE: What’s happened to you, Oriana? You don’t let stuff like this get to you.

  ORIANA: No, it’s not that.

  CELINE: Then what else is it?

  ORIANA: I dunno. I just don’t want to go out at the moment.

  CELINE: Because you think people are going to think you have herpes?

  ORIANA: Maybe.

  CELINE: Most people will have just forgotten that.

  ORIANA: Yeah.

  CELINE: You know how this works, there’s always someone new to be picked on. You’re yesterday’s news, girl.

  ORIANA: Yeah. I know.

  CELINE: Seriously. I’ve never seen you like this.

  ORIANA: I’m fine. Really. I just don’t feel like… I mean… things don’t interest me like they used to… it all just seems really futile, you know… like even school and everything.

  CELINE: Everything what?

  ORIANA: Like the future, you know? What’s the point?

  CELINE: You should see someone.

  ORIANA: Yeah, I think Dad’s gonna take me to someone. Like a counsellor or so.

  CELINE: You’ve got to snap out of it, Oriana or they’ll put you on… I dunno… pills or something. Anti-depressants which make you really dopey.

  ORIANA: I just pretend to take them.

  CELINE: What?

  ORIANA: They’ve put me on them already but I spit them out.

  CELINE: Why?

  ORIANA: I don’t need them.

  CELINE: Oriana. I don’t know what to say to you… you just seem totally different and I can’t believe it’s because of some bullshit online, you know. You know it’s just… nothing.

  ORIANA: I know.

  CELINE: You don’t.

  ORIANA: I do. And if I just chew them up and spit them out that will be the end of them.

  ORIANA puts another page through the shredder.

  CELINE watches her, still concerned, then exits.

  SCENE THIRTEEN

  FIGURE 2: My daughter started cyberbullying because she couldn’t handle a situation with a girl at school. The other girl started it but it was my daughter who retaliated. And it was my daughter at the end of the day who got into trouble for doing it. The other child walked out of it scot-free but I don’t have a problem with that. She was doing verbal stuff and my daughter was putting it on the net. Friends of mine said that if they were in my situation as a parent that they wouldn’t have exposed their child at school. Had I done that, had I covered up for her, I believe that I would have a more conniving child doing worse things to kids now. I think that the earlier we deal with the signs, the earlier we get there, the better. Because children don’t just turn up at sixteen as bullies, they start somewhere and I think it’s when they’re in Year 7 and conflict arises and they don’t know how to handle it except by hitting back on the net. I always, when I want to talk to my daughter and make sure she understands, I hold both her hands and look into her eyes, because when you’re holding somebody’s hands they have to look into your eyes. She took both my hands and I knew straight away what she was going to say to me. A lot of parents think that if they hide it it will be fine but actually what they are doing is harming their child. It was dealt with very privately by the school and now my daughter has been a captain, she is respected in class and she is liked by the teachers. I think people are afraid of it being made public and being labelled and that shouldn’t happen either.

  FIGURE 3: Children who come from a very strict household basically get punished for doing things at home and so they have to have an outlet so they come to school and misbehave at school. The kids that have a more free environment at home tend to be the ones that are better behaved. That’s why I let my kids jump on my furniture. Because when I go somewhere I expect them not to jump on other people’s furniture. The kids that come to my house I can generally tell what type of households they come from because if they come and jump on my furniture I know they come from a strict household and if they are well-behaved they come from a relaxed household. So I think that, um, kids that go to school that misbehave at school don’t have that outlet at home. I think that both those things tie up with bullying… if you are too strict with a child there is no outlet for them and they have to do it somewhere. They come and pick on kids at school because at home they are raised very strictly.

  SCENE FOURTEEN

  TERRI: They’ve traced the bully.

  CELINE: Oh?

  TERRI: It’s a made-up account.

  CELINE: I thought it would be.

  TERRI: Why?

  CELINE: I dunno. Just because that’s the gutless way these people work.

  TERRI: Have you ever bullied anyone online?

  CELINE: Me?

  TERRI: Yeah.

  CELINE: I guess I might have. I mean… I’ve written things that were a joke and my friends know it’s a joke because they know how I talk… you know?

  TERRI: But to someone outside it wouldn’t be?

  CELINE: To someone outside they might think it’s abuse, but it was a joke.

  TERRI: Ever bullied anyone anonymously?

  CELINE: I dunno. I guess so. Probably everyone has.

  TERRI: Why did you?

  CELINE: I dunno.

  TERRI: ’Cause they can’t trace the original bully but they can trace a whole lot of people who joined in.

  CELINE: What do you mean?

  TERRI: I mean since that first thing…

  CELINE: About the herpes?

  TERRI: Yeah, once that went up a whole lot of people just like went for her as well.

  CELINE: She didn’t tell me that.

  ORIANA: Because I wanted to know.

  ORIANA has entered, unseen.

  CELINE: Oriana, you’re back.

  ORIANA: I’m back.

  CELINE: Are you okay now?

  ORIANA: Who knows?

  CELINE: You look good.

  ORIANA: I heard they traced the thing.

  CELINE: But not the who.

  TERRI: What did you want to know?

  CELINE: This is Terri.

  TERRI: Hi, Oriana. What did you want to know?

  ORIANA: Two people can do exactly the same thing or wear exactly the same thing and one of them everyone will notice them and praise them and the other will either just be ignored or there’ll be some—I dunno—some thing that never makes them popular or never makes them… fit.

  TERRI: Why is that?

  ORIANA: That’s what I wanted to know.

  CELINE: It’s just—the luck of the draw.

  TERRI: What draw?

  CELINE: How do I know?

  ORIANA: Like in last year’s Year 12, Tanya Van Mar used to wear her hair in funny creations, buns and plaits on the side and all sorts of structured dos, you know, and then at the school farewell there was a character in the thing—in the mock-up—that had crazy hair and everyone knew it was Tanya Van Mar and she like got to be friends with Anita Ross and met all her model family and stuff.

  CELINE: Yeah?

  ORIANA: And Grier Wolseley did exactly the same thing with her hair and everyone said she was just a weirdo.

  CELINE: It wasn’t as good, what she did.

  ORIANA: But it was just as original. Maybe more original.

  CELINE: But when Tanya Van Mar did it it was cool.

  TERRI: But why?

  CELINE: I don’t know.

  ORIANA: Like… is it part of our animal brain or something?

  CELINE: Maybe.

  ORIANA: But it’s true, isn’t it. It’s not so much what you do but who it is that’s doing it.

  CELINE: I guess.

  TERRI: But then how do you ever become one of the cool people?

  CELINE: Why are you asking me?

  TERRI: So does that mean, if I’m a picked-on person, that I can change schools and change like everything but eventually people will like… start to pick on me again?

  CE
LINE: Not necessarily.

  ORIANA: But probably.

  CELINE: Don’t say that.

  ORIANA: That’s why people say why does this always happen to me. Because it does. It only does happen to some people more than others.

  CELINE: So they bring it on themselves? So are they doing something?

  ORIANA: Not doing something but maybe sending out some signal.

  CELINE: That’s paranoid.

  ORIANA: Well, that’s what I wanted to find out. But instead I became one of the…

  TERRI: Damned.

  They laugh.

  Yeah. Well, I reckon old Mr Squarepants can get stuffed.

  ORIANA: Who?

  TERRI: The hotmail address was squarepants@hotmail.com.

  ORIANA turns and looks at CELINE.

  ORIANA: Was it you?

  CELINE: What?

  ORIANA: It was, wasn’t it?

  CELINE: How can you even say that?

  TERRI: What?

  ORIANA: You were calling me that.

  CELINE: It’s a character. It’s…

  ORIANA: Why?

  CELINE: Oriana, that’s just crazy.

  TERRI: What is?

  ORIANA: Why?

  CELINE: I think you’d better go back home. I really don’t think you’re as over this as you think.

  ORIANA: What? It started off as a joke maybe? Thought you’d just help along with the project?

  CELINE: I don’t have to listen to this from you. I thought you were my friend.

  TERRI: Will one of you please tell me what is going on?

  ORIANA: Tell her.

  CELINE: She’s somehow got it into her crazy brain that I am Squarepants.

  ORIANA: Because she is.

  CELINE: Tell Miss Pardelote that I’m off this project.

  ORIANA: I know it’s you.

  CELINE: You really have lost it. Totally lost it.

  CELINE exits.

  TERRI: Why do you think it would be her?

  ORIANA: Well, who else would it be?

  TERRI: It could be anyone. It could be me.

  ORIANA: Why would you do that?

  TERRI: Why would Celine?

  ORIANA: So I’d need her to… I dunno… console me. Support me. Since it happened we’ve got a lot closer… maybe she wanted that.

  TERRI: That’s a pretty viral thing to do to… I dunno… prop up your friendship.

  ORIANA: If it was her it would explain a lot.

  TERRI: And if it’s not you’ve just wrongly accused your friend.

  ORIANA: Maybe.

  SCENE FIFTEEN

  FIGURE 4: It shocked me a lot. My child had been an angel up to then and the shame was it was literally in front of my eyes… it was terrible. Having to face that school appearance was a shocking trauma for me. I was ready to nail her up to the door but, um, I also realised that children are going to be children. The reality of it was that part of me did no longer trust her and even now I still always have the slightest suspicion when there is a problem. So, it shocked me beyond words. But I had no problem admitting it to the school that my child had admitted it to me or forcing my child to make that telephone call to that other little girl. I had no problem doing that. I knew that the next six months was going to be tough for me as a mother. Nothing flowed on into the playground though. I think the other teachers asked the other parents to keep it quiet and that’s exactly what happened. Now that was a very useful thing to do actually because it allows you to move on, you know what I mean, it means that, ah, you don’t have to wake up and think I need to get out of this environment, I need to move schools. I think handling it in quite a private way it helped a lot. It doesn’t have to be done publicly, it can be recognised that it is just part of growing up and part of being a child. I think a lot of parents think that it could never be their child. My child is a very good child, she is very thoughtful and wants to please other kids. I think the law says it’s actually up to seven or eight that children actually don’t always know if something is right or wrong. So you know children do a lot of things that they are not sure is right at that age because they haven’t realised that teasing is not quite right, lying is not quite right. As parents it is our role to start to see these things first. I remember going through my kid’s bag and if she even had a pen that didn’t belong to her I would make her take it back. I think there are a lot of parents that would think ‘oh, it’s only a pen, it doesn’t matter’, but it does. Now even if my child finds something on the street and says ‘oh, I found five cents’, I say ‘no, put it back’. Do you know what I mean? That five cents belongs to somebody, so my child automatically knows now ‘oh, that belongs to somebody. I have picked it up by accident I have to put it back tomorrow.’ I think all of these things… I think as a parent we have to be diligent about all of these tiny little things and yet I had ignored it at times which lead to problems with my daughter. My daughter was complaining about this little girl and I ignored it. I thought it was little-girl stuff and I basically didn’t even bother to give her decent answers so she decided she was going to take the solutions in her own hands. If I had listened to her as a parent perhaps it wouldn’t of happened.

  FIGURE 5: As a parent I’m not very computer savvy, I’m just a user. I’ve learnt a few things like, um, if my… I know how to go into the history and see what my daughter has looked up. She knows that I know how to do that. I say to her ‘you have to behave appropriately online because anything you do online can be tracked by anybody, anybody anywhere can find actually what you have looked at’. And to prove it to her one day I sat her down and showed her the history and she saw that I could look it up. That’s keeping her in line.

  FIGURE 6: Don’t hide your child. If you need to expose your child to authorities like the teachers, the teachers were wonderful at the time. I had just bought my daughter’s Christmas present that cost about $500 and I wanted to take it back and they said ‘don’t take it back, separate the two of them’. My child did not get into trouble at school probably because of the way I handled it myself, I don’t know, age, I don’t know, but I got a lot of support from the teachers in terms of how to handle it and not to be too harsh with my child. In terms in what happens at home my child now does not have availability to the computer. It’s the ramification that is she aware of.

  SCENE SIXTEEN

  All the FIGURES are splendidly dressed as matadors, in wonderful hats and coats.

  ORIANA: I had a dream that was not all a dream

  and in it there appeared a host of matadors

  their red rags waving

  bright as balloons

  to bring on the enemy

  they ducked

  they weaved

  their bodies turning on muscled torsos

  arms and rib cages lifted into their finery

  a prance of power

  a dance of death and blood

  a ritual slaying

  and in my dream I ran among the toreadors

  begging them to spare the brute

  pleading for the life of the beast

  who turned then and gored me through.

  Awake my senses and come intuitions

  for I am wounded by my own blindness

  my lifeforce pools and eddies down my arms

  toward the dust that is the earth.

  When CELINE enters, ORIANA has blood pouring down her arms onto the ground. Both her arms are covered in blood.

  CELINE: What have you done?

  ORIANA: I was a toreador. In my dream.

  CELINE: Oriana?

  ORIANA: They were killing the bull.

  CELINE: I’m going to call an ambulance.

  ORIANA: No.

  ORIANA struggles and grabs CELINE’s phone. She also wipes blood on CELINE.

  CELINE: What are you doing?

  ORIANA: Tell me.

  CELINE: Oriana. You’ve got to let me call.

  ORIANA: Tell me why.

  CELINE: Let me call and I’ll tell you.
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br />   ORIANA: No. Tell me first.

  CELINE: Alright.

  ORIANA: Why did you start it?

  CELINE: I didn’t. It wasn’t me.

  ORIANA: Then who was it.

  CELINE: I don’t know. We may never know.

  ORIANA: Why couldn’t you say it to my face? Why couldn’t you just say it to me?

  CELINE: How about something just to stop the bleeding.

  CELINE: takes something and wraps it around ORIANA’s hands.

  ORIANA: It really wasn’t you?

  CELINE: No.

  ORIANA: But I know it was.

  CELINE: Why would I do that?

  ORIANA: I don’t know. Maybe you don’t know yourself.

  CELINE: No.

  ORIANA: Maybe it was just… to help make the surveys interesting. You couldn’t have known that all the others would come on and keep it going.

  CELINE: Whoever did it couldn’t have known that.

  ORIANA: Was it you?

  CELINE: No.

  ORIANA: It was though, wasn’t it?

  Pause.

  CELINE: I can’t find where you’ve… I can’t find any wound…

  ORIANA: [screaming] Tell me!

  CELINE: Oriana, calm down.

  ORIANA: Tell me!

  CELINE: Alright.

  ORIANA: Alright it was you?

  CELINE: Yes.

  ORIANA: It was you who wrote that I had herpes.

  CELINE: It was a joke.

  ORIANA: A joke?

  CELINE: It was so far-fetched. I thought it would just make you shake your head.

  ORIANA: And what? Confide in my friend. Have a laugh about it together?

  CELINE: Yeah.

  ORIANA: This is the truth now?

  CELINE: Yes.

  ORIANA: YOU LYING BITCH!

  CELINE: Let me call the ambulance.

  ORIANA: I’m going to get you expelled for this.

  CELINE: Alright. Anything you want. Anything you want. Only let me call the ambulance.

  ORIANA: What ambulance? It’s paint.

  CELINE: What?

  ORIANA: Paint. It’s red paint. Fake blood. Get it?

  CELINE: You’re crazy.

  ORIANA: I’m crazy why? Because I fooled you? Because I pretended to be something I’m not. I’d have thought you could pick a fake. Being one yourself.

  CELINE: Is it really paint?